NCJ Number
160251
Date Published
1995
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Those in the movie and television industry can work to reduce violence in the media if they focus on prosocial programming. Such programming would portray positive values and actions and would reduce portrayals of violence and sex.
Abstract
Television, films, magazines, and music have become powerful influences in our culture. They do much more than entertain. They can change time-honored cultural attitudes and replace them with destructive attitudes, or they can re-enforce positive attitudes, cultural values, and moral behaviors. Most researchers agree that entertainment media have unlimited potential for good that is virtually untapped. The media have helped to raise the level of awareness about the tragedy of child abduction and molestation to a height no advertising budget could match. Dr. Dorothy G. Singer, codirector of Yale University Family Television Research Center, believes the media, particularly television, could provide role models for adolescents and teach them coping skills for everyday problems. Her experiments with such programming show that youth have responded well to real-life guidance for coping with such issues as alcoholism in the family, parent-child relationships, lying, dating, dealing with handicaps, shyness, and peer pressure. In 1982 an important study found that prosocial programs could influence children with behavioral disorders. In recommending "prosocial programming" to the television and film industry, the National Family Foundation narrowly defines it as programming that espouses family values, i.e., those values that strengthen the concept of marriage and child rearing as primary in maintaining a healthy society. Such programming can hold viewers' interest and be entertaining as well.